


Where the Love Light Gleams

by elysiumwaits



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of Sterek, Alternate Universe - Fallout (Video Games) Setting, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bittersweet, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Derek Hale as the Sole Survivor (Fallout), Fallout 4 AU, Goodneighbor (Fallout), Love Confessions, M/M, Stiles Stilinski as a Railroad Agent (Fallout), The Railroad (Fallout), because I can't tag happy ending when the setting is a nuclear apocalyptic wasteland, but it doesn't end badly, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21673774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: A year and two months after coming out of cryo in Vault 111, Derek celebrates Christmas in the Commonwealth with Stiles, the mysterious Railroad Agent.Otherwise known as the Fallout 4 fusion not one single person asked for. You're welcome.--“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice says, low and a little too close to be anything other than intimate. Derek feels the shadow of a smile grace his lips before he can stop it from coming. “Looks like Santa came a little early this year. Everything I want for Christmas, right here on a barstool at the end of the world.”
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46
Collections: 12 Days of Sterek





	Where the Love Light Gleams

**Author's Note:**

> This threatened to become a whole verse with a series, because there’s backstory and plot I built in the name of worldbuilding.
> 
> Featuring Derek the Sole Survivor and Stiles the Railroad Agent. (My SoSu/Deacon feels are showing). 
> 
> This is very self-indulgent. Timeline of the game is a bit wonky, and I went with Derek’s birthday being on November 7th, not Christmas. Wolfdog is the blatant Dogmeat rip-off.
> 
> For this fic, you’ll want to go find Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” as well as the Doris Day cover and Frank Sinatra’s cover (and Kelly Clarkson’s is pretty good too). The song that isn’t named that Erica is singing at first is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and it’s mentioned she sings a version of “Santa Baby” as well.

Derek doesn’t even realize it’s Christmas Eve until he gets to Goodneighbor.

The Third Rail is usually a little subdued. Given the nature of Goodneighbor, Derek would have thought otherwise - chems and alcohol don’t add up to equal quiet in his mind, but The Third Rail is consistently calmer than either of the bars in Diamond City, where someone gets bodily thrown out of the Dugout Inn at least once every couple of days. He’s even done some of the throwing as a favor to the twins who run it. He’s never seen a fight inside The Third Rail, not once, and rarely one within the walls of Goodneighbor at all.

Barring, of course, the one Derek had seen a few minutes after arriving, when someone had tried to shake him down for caps because Derek was still more anger than sense back then, and the uncle he’d thought was dead (and who kind of was, just not in the way he’d expected) had sauntered up to knife the guy between the ribs.

It’s been a long year and some change. 

But, yeah, Derek sees the date on his Pip-Boy. He feels the chill in the air, wipes the snow that falls off of his goggles and keeps going, because he’s got places to be and a wasteland to survive. So he knows, detachedly, that it’s the evening of December 24th, 2288, but he doesn’t really register what that means until he’s sitting at the bar, Wolfdog stretched out under his stool and a bottle of blessedly cold beer on the bar in front of him. 

It’s only when he actually starts to listen to Erica sing that he notices it’s not one of her usual songs. The music is mournful, sure, and as he listens, Derek realizes that there are colorful twinkling lights haphazardly decorating random surfaces around The Third Rail. That’s when it hits him.

It’s December 24th, 2288. Christmas Eve.

Erica sings, slow and melancholy to the sound of brass and strings sections that aren’t physically there but play like they are. It’s a Christmas song, definitely, one that Derek half-remembers from a living room radio over two hundred years ago. He tries not to dwell these days, he really does - not with Cora alive and somewhere out in the wasteland, not with Peter as alive as any pre-War ghoul can be. Dwelling leads to thinking about his family, forever trapped in cryo systems that none of them agreed to, cryo systems that  _ failed _ , down in the depths of Vault 111.

Derek doesn’t leave the Third Rail though. He paid for the beer, after all, and the other option for the evening is going to the Old State House and watching his uncle play politician with that mercenary Argent all evening. He’s walked in on them in various stages of it before, from the weird charged foreplay in the form of casually threatening each other, to the fully naked passionate tableau Derek never wanted to see in the first place and certainly doesn’t want to see again.

So, Christmas Eve this year looks to be sad Christmas carols, alcohol, and the company of his dog. 

Wolfdog is the best warning system Derek could ask for, so when someone slides onto the stool next to him and she doesn’t even lift her head to check them out, Derek pays them no mind.

“Well, well,  _ well _ ,” a familiar voice says, low and a little too close to be anything other than intimate. Derek feels the shadow of a smile grace his lips before he can stop it from coming. “Looks like Santa came a little early this year. Everything I want for Christmas, right here on a barstool at the end of the world.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, lifts a finger to where the bartender, Boyd, is watching them, eyes sharp in the way that so many are in the Commonwealth. Information is worth just as many caps as ammo sometimes, but lately Derek’s been hearing that Boyd’s not dealing in information anymore, at least not information about Derek. “I think we both know you’re on the naughty list.”

“Nah, I’m not. I checked it twice, just to make sure.” Stiles goes silent as Boyd places the beer in front of him, smile as disarming and easygoing as ever, and Derek hands over the caps. As the bartender steps away, Stiles shifts, leans a little more into Derek’s space. “I mean, I could be on the naughty list if you wanted me to be,” he says, and Derek’s hand tightens just a bit on the neck of his beer bottle at the way the Christmas lights catch in his eyes. “I could be nice, too, I guess. But I think you like me a little naughty, Wanderer.” He winks, pulls away, and Derek can breathe. He doesn’t really want to be able to breathe yet.

They do this sometimes. Stiles appears out of thin air, sometimes with a message from the Railroad, sometimes with a mission. Sometimes, more often lately, he shows up for seemingly no reason at all and follows Derek around the Commonwealth for a little while, armed with sarcasm and a quick trigger finger. Sometimes Derek goes to sleep in a bed - doesn’t matter where, whether it’s the Beacon settlement, his house in Diamond City, Hotel Rexford, the Railroad HQ, or a conveniently placed mattress inside a random half-destroyed house when Derek’s so tired he can’t see straight. Sometimes, when he wakes up, Stiles is fast asleep beside him with his mouth open and pressed to Derek’s arm, and Wolfdog is curled up at their feet to keep guard. 

More often than not, they fuck. When Stiles comes with a message or a mission, it’s a quick, frantic affair, while Derek’s patching Stiles up after a firefight or vice versa. When Stiles doesn’t have a pressing objective for them to accomplish, it builds a little slower, culminates in something intense that looks and feels like it means something more than either of them can afford. 

But it’s the late nights and early mornings that Derek loves, Stiles warm and safe next to him when Derek often hadn’t even known where in the wasteland Stiles was. Those are when Derek wakes up to Stiles fast asleep and snoring, curled into him like Derek can protect him, like he feels safe in a way that he doesn’t anywhere else in the world. When Stiles finally wakes up on those mornings, the first word out of his mouth isn’t Derek’s Railroad alias, isn’t ‘Wanderer.’ It’s Derek’s  _ name _ , said in a sleepy, satisfied sigh ghosted out across Derek’s skin.

“You look awfully blue for the season.” 

The comment draws Derek out of his own head, and he focuses back on Stiles, comes back to the moment - Christmas lights, mostly cold beer, Erica singing about how she’s been a good girl all year and uranium mines.

Stiles doesn’t miss much, Derek knows. He can’t afford to. Every move that Derek makes tells Stiles something about him, but Stiles doesn’t often mention what he learns unless he’s got a good reason or a point to make. They’ve come a long way from Stiles shadowing Derek along the Freedom Trail and stepping out just in time to vouch for him to Lydia. He can read Derek like no one else can, but usually, Stiles doesn’t make it so obvious as he is now. He just sets about dragging Derek off to put a smile on his face one way or another.

And Derek… well, Derek hasn’t had his guard up around Stiles in a long time. 

“I didn’t even realize it was Christmas Eve,” Derek admits, picks at the label on his beer. It’s a Gwinnett bottle, but it’s sure as hell not Gwinnett. “This time last year I was… what?”

“Tracking that mercenary, Argent.” Stiles takes a sip of his beer. Of course he knows - Derek hadn’t known him then, but Stiles knew Derek. Always from afar, always in disguise. “Not your uncle’s boyfriend Argent, the other one. His crazy sister.”

Derek snorts. Crazy was putting it lightly. “So, last year I spent Christmas shooting my way in to kill the mercenary who killed one of my sisters and kidnapped the other one, with a Synth Sheriff. My first Christmas in two hundred years, and I killed someone, and I felt good about it. I missed my birthday this year, you know? Didn’t even notice it.”

“I’ve heard birthdays don’t matter as much when you’re over 200 years old.” Stiles is still holding onto his beer bottle, fidgeting, making slow circles with the neck of it, but his eyes are on Derek, always seeing more than Derek wants to show. “And what are you doing this year?”

Derek shrugs. “Sitting in a bar, listening to Christmas music, and talking to you, I guess.”

Erica’s song tapers off, and she starts in on another one, a melody that Derek doesn’t recognize and doesn’t pay attention to now that Stiles is here. It’s incredible how Stiles can blend in anywhere at all, considering that once Derek knows he’s there, Derek can’t look away. 

“Yeah, about that,” Stiles says, stops fidgeting with his bottle to face Derek. “So I’ve always been told that Christmas and the holidays are all about being surrounded by the people you care about and that care about you. Yeah, you’re sitting in a bar, listening to Christmas music, but you’re sitting in  _ Boyd’s _ bar, listening to  _ Erica’s _ music, in your uncle  _ Peter’s _ town, with Wolfdog. Minus the gifts, of course, seems to me like you’re doing everything right.”

There’s something vulnerable in his tone that Derek almost misses. It makes him pause, stumble over a reply until he loses the words completely. Doesn’t matter, because Stiles goes on.

“Not to mention, of course, that you could be in Beacon. Hell, you could probably leave tomorrow morning and ring in the New Year with Scott, Allison, Isaac, the Sheriff… all of the other settlers and strays you picked up along the way. You know, people you care about. That care about you.” Stiles taps the neck of his bottle like he’s thinking, before he lifts it to take another drink. 

People that Derek cares about, people that care about Derek. 

“What are you doing for Christmas, Stiles?” he asks. “I thought you’d be at HQ.” People that Stiles cares about. People that care about Stiles.

Stiles doesn’t answer right away. Erica’s song changes again, and this one Derek recognizes. This one makes Derek ache for a life burned away in atomic bombs and rusted with centuries that passed him by while he was frozen underground. 

“I’m sitting in a bar, listening to Christmas music,” Stiles says, just as Erica sings about snow and mistletoe, presents on the tree. “Talking to you. There’s someone I care about here, you know. That I really,  _ really _ hope cares about me.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say to that. They’ve never even come close to that kind of confession. It’s not Stiles announcing his eternal love, but it might as well be. Nothing lasts forever in the Commonwealth, Derek knows, so you just find something that matters and hold onto it with tight hands for as long as you can. 

Finally, what he manages to say, after almost too long a pause, is, “I don’t think mistletoe even grows anymore. Will you kiss me anyway?”

Stiles smiles, sharp and bright, like the first flare of sunlight after two hundred years underground. The Christmas lights catch in his eyes and glow, and the press of his arm against Derek’s is warm. He doesn’t actually reply - instead, he leans in and presses a slow, gentle kiss to Derek’s lips.

As Derek’s hand comes up to cradle Stiles’ jaw, he hears the last bars of Erica’s song, drifting away with the smoke: 

“ _ I’ll be home for Christmas, dear... if only in my dreams _ .”


End file.
